ABSTRACT
When fears about the upswing in immigration began to peak in the nineteenth century, the metaphor of the melting pot became popular with journalists. A comparison of political cartoons over space indicates that regardless of the stigmatized immigrant group, whether Irish, Guatamalan or Kenyan, the imagery and discourse strategies are remarkably similar. English, held up as the symbol of the successfully assimilated immigrant, is promoted as the one and the only possible language of a unified and healthy nation. When immigrants become bilingual (as happened, for example, in the case of the German immigrant population, something that would have irritated Benjamin Franklin, no doubt), the question is no longer which language, but which English or more specifically in this chapter, which accent and ultimately, which race, ethnicity, religion, worldview. Immigrants from the British Isles who speak varieties of English which cause significant communication challenges are not stigmatized: the differences are noted with great interest, and sometimes with laughter.
